Film: Growing pains

Garden State treads familiar ground, but its budding director has crafted a touching tale.By Edward Porter

You never have to wait long for an American film about a sensitive person in their twenties, or thereabouts, struggling to find purpose and meaning in life. Only a couple of weeks ago, I Love Huckabees gave us a surreal variation on this theme, and the presence there of Dustin Hoffman was a reminder that movies in this ballpark have been around at least since The Graduate. The present year began with Scarlett Johansson wandering aimlessly through Lost in Translation while slow pop music evoked her Weltschmerz. Now it draws to a close with Zach Braff wandering aimlessly through Garden State, and the slow pop music that soundtracks his melancholy even includes a Simon and Garfunkel song, a choice that takes us back again to Benjamin Braddock and “plastics”.

Just as there is a constantly replenished audience for films of this kind, so there is a steady supply of young